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Jan 19, 2010

Water from the Well

I am glad I am writing this while my mom is

still living because it may be too hard to write after she moves on to her heavenly home. She is 83 years old and has the constitution of a lion, I think. I won’t be surprised if she survives me because I do not have her physical

energy.

Mom grew up on the outskirts of Ironton, Ohio, about ½ mile from what is now Rt. 23, in a small town called Coreyville. It was a little house on the hillside with one bedroom, a kitchen, and a sitting room. The privy sat below the house on the hill beyond the dirt road and the well. She was born the second of six children, on January 5th, 1927.

There were neighbors right next door on one side and others further on down the road. There were plenty of kids to play and get into trouble with, on occasion. Mamaw and Papaw kept a close eye on their children, probably because five of the six were girls, but they pretty much had the run of the hill on which they lived. It made for a pretty good playground, all the way down to the creek in the bottom.

They made a nice little swimmin’ hole at one spot in the creek and it was my favorite place to play when we visited there. I can still smell the fresh scent that came from the water and the surrounding forest. I wasn’t allowed to go there by myself, but if my brother, who was 5 years older than me, went, I could go too. One hot summer day we were being watched by my aunt Norma, the 5th of the 6 children, who was engaged to my uncle at the time, and they let us go to the creek. There were several neighbor boys swimming there who were playing roughly so my brother told me to stay out of the water and wait for a while on the shore. I did as he said because I was afraid of those guys. But being only 5 years old, I couldn’t sit and do nothing for very long, so I began to pick up sticks and rocks off the ground to play with. Eventually, I wanted to do what every kid with a rock wants to do, throw it in the water. So I looked for a calm space in the water to throw that rock. Just after it left my hand, up popped one of the boys, right where I had aimed that rock, and in a split second, he came out of the water with a gash in his forehead. He and his brothers ran home and I ran back to the house. I was terrified of what was going to happen to me.

At the house, Greg told my aunt and soon to be uncle what had happened and they comforted me and actually understood that I had not purposely

thrown a rock at him. But his father did not see it that way.

We were outside, Aunt and Uncle in the swing on the front porch, Greg on the steps, and I exploring the yard, when he came storming over to the house looking to get me. When my aunt saw him coming after me, she said “You lay one hand on her and I‘ll get Greg’s bb gun and shoot you!” Fortunately, he left, in a huff of course, but he left. She threatened him with “Greg’s bb gun” because it was right there on the porch. I suspect if it weren’t there, she would have said “Papaw’s shotgun”, which wasn’t much further away in the house. I didn’t really matter to me, just as long as he was gone. Even when my parents returned, I didn’t catch any punishment from them, other than a strong admonition about throwing rocks in the water when people were swimming. It never happened again.When I was not much older, my grandparents moved down the road to South Point, because the new highway was going to destroy the road access to their house. We had to park at the top of the hill and walk down to the house as a result and we did that on nearly every visit until the old house burned down when I was a teenager. It became an empty, dilapidated old house, but it was full of memories that Mom, her parents, her siblings, and we had created which made partially for who I am today.

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When my aunt Betty passed away in 2004, my cousin Michelle and I walked over to my grandparents’ grave. I said, “All because of them.” ...................